egypt is critical to this. there is a reason we spent decades in, you know, worked so hard, the u.s., to create the camp david accords back in the 1979 and that we spent billions of dollars each and every year giving money to israelis and egyp shuns to keep that in place. egypt is strategic culturally throughout the region and just physically. the suez canal is major, major arterry for trade. you also have a lot of pipelines and other ways that oil moves around in that region. if egypt decides to go ahead and break with israel and use this as a pretext to do so i think you will have a very different map in the middle east. melissa: mike barrett, thanks for joining us i think that was terrifying but thank you. >> all right, melissa. melissa: sit down and buckle up. after hearing nothing but chatter from lawmakers how to deal with the fiscal cliff, "money" has taken matters into our own hands. we'll go through the solutions. we'll solve this problem at least part of it with one of my favorite economists. at the e